


Kaleidoscope

by thesearchforbluejello



Series: That Would Be Enough [2]
Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Angst, F/M, Insomnia, probably not, tw panic attack, will I ever write anything without angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-19
Updated: 2017-12-23
Packaged: 2019-02-17 06:27:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13071024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesearchforbluejello/pseuds/thesearchforbluejello
Summary: "He pauses in the doorway, not sure if she notices, and the sight of her standing pale in the kaleidoscopic light of the star trails is etched into his mind even as the door closes between them."





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'm enormously grateful to devovere for being a better beta than I ever could have hoped. Her incredible advice made this a cohesive whole instead of the hot mess it was to begin with. My infinite thanks also go to Thealorn, who convinced me not to abandon this entirely, even though she's never even seen this show. Thanks again, my dude.
> 
> Keep in mind that this is the unplanned, accidental follow up to A Dream of Home, so it's going make a lot less sense if you haven't read that yet.

Chakotay hasn't seen anyone in hours. His feet move of their own accord, his mind surrendering enough control for him to find some small solace in a sense of detached motion. He's worked beta and gamma shifts before, but he's been on the bridge or in his office or doing something, not haunting the halls when he should be asleep. There's a nervous energy sparkling in his veins, a vague echo of the klaxons rattling around in his head like he expects the ship to go to red alert any second. The corridor lights are dimmed for the ship's artificial night, but it's not much of a relief from the ache that's been gripping his head for the past several days.

He's almost convinced himself to turn back and continue not sleeping in the privacy of his quarters when his com badge chirps and startles him.

"Seven to Commander Chakotay." He doesn't notice how exhausted she sounds.

"Seven. Is everything alright?"

"I apologize for the lateness of the hour, Commander, but if you would, please come collect the captain. She is resisting my attempts to make her see reason."

"Where is she?"

"In astrometrics."

"I'll be right there."

***

She keys in a command so the display goes blank as soon as he walks in. His eyes flicker from the screen to her, to Seven. He takes in the shadows beneath Seven's eyes, her usually immaculate hair escaping from its pins.

"Why don't you get some rest," he says. She glances at Kathryn, who's still working at the console, steadfastly ignoring Chakotay. She nods, casting one more glance over her shoulder before she leaves. 

Chakotay leans against the console, just slightly infringing on Kathryn's personal space. "Why did she call me?"

"I don't know," she says curtly, although some part of her most certainly does know. "I'm sorry she bothered you."

"It's not a bother," he says, watching her fingers on the console, and she's suddenly aware that he's trying to puzzle out what she's working on.

"It’s late,” she says. “You should go." Her words are brusque, and she doesn't look at him. He pauses, but nods his assent before turning to leave, unsure if he's making the right decision.


	2. Chapter 2

Chakotay steps onto the bridge the following afternoon to oversee the second half of alpha shift, hoping the universe takes some small mercy on his exhausted body. He and Kathryn have been working limited duty shifts for the past two weeks, a condition of their return to duty on which the Doctor was unwilling to compromise. He settles stiffly into his chair, glancing over at Kathryn to see if she managed to snag some precious hours of sleep the previous night. 

It's clear she hadn't.

He knows he doesn't exactly look like the pinnacle of health, making it a bit unfair to judge anyone's appearance, but she undoubtedly looks worse. Her face is almost entirely colorless, her knuckles somehow whiter where they're gripping her mug of coffee. She's tense in her chair, reading through a report on a padd, her eyes scanning from line to line with a concentration he's sure is fueled entirely by caffeine. She leaves the bridge suddenly and without farewell.

***

Chakotay finds himself in the mess hall after his duty shift even though he hasn't had an appetite in weeks. Crewman Chell serves him up a plate of something with a pun for a name that he doesn't quite catch. He almost turns away with his plate when he realizes Chell is still speaking. "I'm sorry, what did you say?"

"I was just wondering if you might take a plate to the captain," he says, obviously a bit uncomfortable. "I don't mean to speak out of turn, but I haven't seen her in days. I just figured... she might want dinner," he finishes lamely.

Chakotay nods, processing this information. "Thank you. I'll bring it to her when I'm finished."

He settles at a table, alone, staring out the windows at the star trails as they pass. He worries, distantly, about Kathryn. His thoughts are muddled and he moves the food from the plate to his mouth in mechanical motions borne of habit rather than hunger. 

He eventually gives up and returns his plate, picking up the one Chell has prepared with mumbled thanks. It's a wasted effort, since she isn't in her quarters when he arrives.

"Computer, what is the location of Captain Janeway?"

"Captain Janeway is in astrometrics."

He sighs, keying in his code and setting the food in stasis so it'll keep until she returns. He considers trying to locate her, but decides, given her silent exit from the bridge that afternoon, that she’d rather not speak to him. He enters his own quarters, kicking off his boots, tossing his jacket on top of them and collapsing unceremoniously into his bed without removing the rest of his uniform. He tosses his com badge onto the nightstand. Mercifully, he falls asleep quickly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for such a short chapter, but there will be much more angst shortly!


	3. Chapter 3

He wakes to the chirp of his communicator. He opens his eyes against his pillow, groggily unsure if he imagined it. It sounds again.

"Seven of Nine to Commander Chakotay."

"What is it."

"Commander, you're needed in astrometrics, immediately." Chakotay registers the stress in her voice dimly for a moment before he's on his feet and pulling on his boots.

"I'm on my way. Is she okay?"

"I am unsure."

He walks into astrometrics a few minutes later, the second time in two days, with no idea what to expect. Kathryn is sitting on the raised portion of the floor, her face in her hands. Her uniform jacket is discarded beside her. The rise and fall of her chest is alarmingly rapid. Seven is seated beside her, a hand on her back, their knees touching. Chakotay figures it as an attempt to keep her grounded, a smart and surprisingly human movement on Seven's part. 

"What happened?" he asks, fighting to keep his voice calm. 

"That remains unclear," is all Seven says. She looks bewildered, and Chakotay is suddenly reminded again that she has had very little practice at being human. Her ability to read people is like a child's. He glances up at the screen, and over at the consoles. 

Scans and starcharts. Kathryn is looking for something. 

"Why don't you go regenerate," he says. Seven looks surprised and more than a little conflicted. "I'll take her back to her quarters; don't worry." Seven looks at him for a moment, searching his eyes for an answer she seems to find, because she nods like she had the night before and leaves. 

When she's gone, he kneels in front of Kathryn, resting back agains his heels. He puts his hands on her knees. "What happened?" he asks. She doesn't answer. He brushes his hands partway along her thighs before bringing them back to her knees, trying to bring her back to herself. "Talk to me," he says. He continues the motion, straying hardly a hand's length from her knees, feeling her tremble, trying not to stress her further, hoping contact and the sound of his voice will bring her around. He talks to her, saying her name like a plea, saying "talk to me" again and again like a mantra.

Eventually, she sighs. It's slight, and he hardly hears it even in the humming silence of the ship's night. He runs a hand along her hair and she leans into the touch, just slightly, but he feels it. "Hey there," he says. Her breath hitches. He moves closer to her, the fabric of his shirt almost brushing her knees, so he can run his hands along her arms, slowly, from her shoulders to her elbows. She relaxes at the touch. "Have you had panic attacks before?" She nods just enough to be perceptible. "This bad?" She shakes her head, again barely perceptible. "Am I too close to you?" She shakes her head, leaning into his touch a little more. He leans forward to take her in his arms, even though it digs her knees uncomfortably into his abs. Still she doesn't unfold herself, but she relaxes against him slowly as he runs his hand along her spine. The ridges and valleys of her vertebrae are a topographical map of her pain.

Minutes pass before her hands fall away from her face, one to her lap, the other resting feather-light on his shoulder. "There you are," he says, smiling even though her eyes are still closed and she can't see him. He tucks her hair behind her ears even though it immediately springs free. "Let's get you to bed," he says, leaving the opening for a joke there and hoping she'll take it. She doesn't. He stands, and she shakes her head. "Come on."

"No," she says, soft and strained, her eyes on the carpet at his feet. 

"Kathryn," he says, a warning in his voice.

"I have to finish this," she says, still to the floor, speaking through the hollowness he knows is still yawing in her chest. He can hear it in her voice, and his own emptiness echoes back.

"It can wait."

"No, it can't," she snaps, her eyes finally coming up to meet his.

"Of course it can--"

"No it can't. It's too important."

"Too important? Nothing is more important than you." The phrase is out of his mouth before he can stop it. They both know he means it, but they both also know that he will always put Voyager first. It is a contrary duty, wearing on him like waves against a stone on the shore. It's a phrase he blames exhaustion for allowing him to voice.

"It is," she insists. And then she says the one thing he's always privately dreaded her saying, because he's always feared that the price would be too high. "I know how to get us home."

He looks down at her, suddenly afraid. "How?" he asks, the word colored in tones of disbelief.

"I remembered what the admiral said. How she wanted us to get back."

"That--"

"Wasn't real, I know. But it started me thinking. Everything made sense. Except that. Everything after the second device was connected was drawn from both of us." Hopes and dreams and fears, she wants to say, but doesn't. He reads the words in the air between them anyway. "The admiral's plans, though, that was just me. It was so specific, so odd... I was on a Borg ship before you rescued me. I think I saw something. Something that can take us home." He sees desperation in her eyes, but he also sees belief.

It strikes him suddenly, what she means. "The conduit," he says.

"Yes. The armor is... impossible," she says. "But I have a plan. I just don't think you're going to like it."

"Funny, I found myself saying the same thing a couple weeks ago," he says more than a little drily. She stands, too suddenly, her legs giving out and sending her falling towards one of the consoles. He lunges to catch her, her deadweight catching him off balance and almost sending them both to floor. She lets out a sigh that sounds more like a groan as she stands up straight again. "We're going to sickbay," he says.

"I'm fine."

"Like hell." He hands her jacket to her, wanting both hands free to catch her if she faints. He guides her out of astrometrics, one arm still around her waist.

She says nothing as they walk, the struggle of placing one foot in front of the other enough for her exhausted mind to handle. In the turbolift, she leans heavily against his shoulder and he knows she's staying upright through sheer force of will alone.

As they approach sickbay, the doors open. B'Elanna storms out, barely sparing them a glance. Tom follows, wearing a robe thrown in obvious haste over a t-shirt and boxers. He looks at them, exasperation shifting into concern and curiosity as he takes in the command team, both partially out of uniform, awake at this late hour, Chakotay's arm still firmly around Kathryn's waist to keep her vertical. Chakotay is too tired to spare him a word as the sickbay doors shut behind them.

The Doctor turns to face them. "Another false alarm, I'm afraid," he says. "What can I do for you?" Chakotay helps Kathryn onto one of the beds, where she sits gripping the edges with white knuckles. The Doctor frowns even though neither of them have answered. "When was the last time you slept?" he asks, scanning her with a tricorder.

"Yesterday."

He arches an eyebrow. "When was the last time you slept more than a couple of hours?" She glares at him. "That's what I thought. You're exhausted, and developing a pretty respectable case of malnutrition. Your blood sugar is extremely low, which would be why the room is spinning," he says, nodding towards her grip on the table. "I'll send some programmed nutritional supplements to your replicator, and you'll be off duty for the next several days," he says brusquely. 

"Doctor," she starts. 

"It's not up for debate," he says. He injects a hypospray of something Chakotay assumes is meant to raise her blood sugar. "Come see me tomorrow, once you've slept and had breakfast. I'd suggest you speak to the ship's counselor, but as we don't have one, I suppose the Commander here will have to do." 

He turns to Chakotay, impatience written on his face, and Chakotay thinks not for the first time that he'd like to have words with Dr. Zimmerman. 

"And as for you, Commander, I'm relieving you from duty as well, just for the next couple days." Chakotay doesn't even have the energy to argue with him. "Get some sleep. I'd rather not give either of you a sedative until your brain chemistry has fully evened out after your ordeal a couple weeks ago, but come back if you continue to be unable to sleep. Now goodnight," he says, turning away into his office.

Chakotay helps Kathryn off the bed, but she seems steadier on her feet. He walks back to her quarters with her; he fully intends to go back down the corridor and collapse face-down into his own bed, but she waves him inside and he finds himself powerless to turn the other way. He steps inside, hyper-aware of each step of his booted feet on the floor. They don't speak. He sits on the edge of her bed as she changes in the small bathroom. He waits, though he's not sure what for.

 

When she steps out he's asleep, lying on his side with the toes of his boots still touching the floor. She smiles despite herself at seeing his face relaxed for the first time in weeks. She shakes his knee gently; he stirs, shifting onto his back with his legs mostly on the bed, which she figures is as good as she’ll manage without waking him completely. She smiles again, removing his com badge and snagging a blanket from her couch to pull over him. She settles under the covers facing him, studying his profile in the dim light until the undertow of her exhaustion finally pulls her down.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is by far the longest chapter; not all that much more to go after this!


	4. Chapter 4

She's too deeply asleep to feel the arm he's thrown over her waist until he scrambles out of the bed, gasping for air. She wakes all at once, years of attacks and red alerts conditioning her to shed sleep like a blanket. 

He stumbles to the doorway between her bedroom and living room, grabbing onto the metal of the frame like a drowning man seizing jetsam to keep his head above water. She slips out of the bed, her legs rebelling against her weight. She says his name, just his name, and he presses his forehead to the doorframe. She reaches out to him, but he holds up a hand. She takes a step back to give him space to breathe. After a moment she settles on the edge of her bed and waits.

This, she realizes, is why he hasn't been sleeping. 

He moves out into the living room, pulling his turtleneck over his head and tossing it over the back of a chair, pacing the room in his tank top. He scrubs his hands through his hair, making it stand on end. He paces, and she follows the motion with her eyes as he shifts in and out of her view. She wants him to talk to her, but like she needed the sound of his voice last night, he needs her silence this early morning.

She waits until he stills, running his hands over his face, until she approaches him. Barefoot, she barely reaches his shoulders. He looks down at her, face shadowed in the dim light of her quarters, eyes dark. She slips her arms around his waist, pressing her ear to his chest and the sound of his suffering heart. He holds her closer, his fingers hot where they wrap around her shoulder. He lets his hands slip to her waist as she brings hers to his face, resting his forehead against hers, her fingertips tracing lines through the hair at the base of his skull, relaxing him into her touch. They stand and he breathes her in, thankful for her silence in the flickering light of the star trails as they pass.

His fingertips find her bare shoulders and trace lines down her arms until he grasps her elbow, a gentle pressure detangling her from him. He takes a step back, leaving her rooted where she stands; she feels like an extension of the deck she stands on, and wonders if he sees her that way too. He pulls away entirely, eyes downcast. A sudden sense of loneliness blooms in her chest, black petals around a rotten center, stealing her air.

He pulls on his turtleneck and retrieves his com badge, pinning it to the fabric with shaking hands. She can't turn to face him as he leaves. He pauses in the doorway, not sure if she notices, and the sight of her standing pale in the kaleidoscopic light of the star trails is etched into his mind even as the door closes between them.


	5. Chapter 5

He walks into astrometrics late the next afternoon to collect a report that he shouldn't be retrieving. He shouldn't even be on duty. He's stayed off the bridge, at least, leaving the con to Tuvok, but he hasn't slept since those brief few hours last night and his veins are buzzing with the need to find something to focus on beside his exhaustion.

In the hindsight that will come after a few moments have passed, he knows that he shouldn't be surprised to see her. A bitter tang of guilt clutches at his throat. Kathryn has the decency to at least look mildly abashed as he walks in, scowling at her. "I'm technically not on duty," she says, holding a hand up.

"You're in uniform," he points out.

"I'm always in uniform." The words are a little too apt, a little too encapsulatory, and she drops her hand. "Chakotay," she starts, but the deck shudders under their feet, the ever-present hum of the warp engines dissolving into silence. They look at each other for a moment before the room drops into darkness.

***

 

Chakotay taps his com badge repeatedly, trying to hail the bridge, or engineering, or anyone nearby who might be able to answer. Kathryn tries to force the doors to open, but there's no power at all to the controls, and she's groping blindly in the dark for the right components.

After minutes broken only by her frustrated exhalations and his irritated hails, static sputters through the com. The voice is a little hard to identify, but it sounds as though it might be Harry. They catch the words "power failure," "temporary," "no danger," "hold on," and "shortly." By the sounds of things, the message is repeated at least twice before they can discern that much of it.

Internally, Kathryn curses both herself and Tuvok for not making sure there was an emergency locker inside astrometrics, curses the ship for dropping dead in the water, and curses engineering for not getting the power up and running yet, even though she knows that’s hardly fair. Outwardly, she lets loose a phrase Tom Paris had once told her he learned from a Ferengi on Deep Space 9.

The translator is offline too, but Chakotay laughs anyway.

"What?" she snaps.

"I don't-- I don't even know what that means."

She can't help but crack a smile. "I don't think you want to. It's quite an image." He snickers and she moves back into the room, towards the sound of his voice. She hears his boots on the floor, and a moment later his fingers jab into her ribs.

"Sorry," he says. His hand curves around her waist and in the absolute silence he hears her breath catch. He moves his hand to her elbow. "Engineering will have the power up soon. We should just stay here."

"You're probably right," she says, her voice sounding a bit stiff even to her own ears. "I don't really fancy crawling through Jefferies tubes in the pitch dark."

They settle on the floor, cross-legged. 

Fear for Kathryn is something Chakotay has experienced every day for the past seven years, its strength accumulating with every negotiation gone sour, every attack, every dangerous mission since his slow realization that he was unexpectedly but inescapably in love with her. That fear has changed shapes and colors and intensities, but it too has been inescapable.

Fear of her, though, is something else entirely.

"You've been avoiding me," he finally says, because the fear is sharp like steel on his tongue. 

"You left," she returns. She's always been acerbic and mercurial in equal turns, and he's once again left in doubt of her true meaning. There is no bite to her words, but even so he's suddenly afraid that he has managed to irreparably damage their unspoken, undefined relationship. They've had fallings out before, but they've never fallen apart completely. They've always managed to put the pieces back together, forging a stronger whole with the knowledge that it could be done.

He isn't sure what's different here. He isn't sure why he's afraid.

In the silence and the dark, he considers it. And then he recognizes the bitter, bitter taste of guilt below his fear. He'd left. He'd left her in sickbay two weeks ago and he'd left her in her quarters last night, without even a word of goodbye either time. He's left her alone, even though he knows she's not sleeping, and he knows she's not eating, just because he isn't either. He is afraid that she blames him as much for that as he himself does.

"I couldn't..." he says. "I needed space." He wonders if it sounds as much as a plea to her as it does to him. It isn't what he wants to say. He wants to apologize for being absent. He wants to apologize for not forcing her to take care of herself, as he always has done. But she's pushed him away too, and his fear has managed to convince him that it was for the best.

"I know." In the silence and the dark, Kathryn feels distant, disconnected from the floor beneath her and Chakotay's slow breaths across from her. Later, she'll blame this poisonous feeling for what she says.

 

"I've always loved science," she says, and he waits. "I could put my world in a box, in a formula or an equation. Speed and energy and direction and time. All these years out here, in isolation..." It's not a complete thought, but she's stopped, and Chakotay wonders which isolation she means. "I've seen so many things that can't be boxed," she finally says. His fingertips find her knee and rest there. "I've made them fit. I've bent and warped that box and I just don't think it's going to hold anymore."

"Is that such a bad thing?"

"There's a theory I learned in the Academy," she says, and he's not sure where she's going with this. "That every decision we make spawns another universe, another timeline. And it's possible that all of those universes and all of those possibilities coexist."

"Okay."

"Even as far as we've made it out here, as far as Starfleet and all of these space-faring races in our universe have traveled, we still don't know for certain. There's no proof in the math."

"Do you need math to prove to you what you already know?"

"Do I, though? Do I know? What we experienced... And everything we've seen..."

"I don't understand."

"Neither do I," she says, as if that’s supposed to help him make sense of this. "Sometimes I think about that theory. That in another universe, you woke up in a field without me. In another universe I watched you die because you couldn't let me go." His breath catches and feels like he might choke. "If I can hold onto that box, none of those things have happened."

"We have the memory of them."

"I know. But memory doesn't equate reality."

"In another universe, Molly lived." He feels her recoil at that, his fingertips slipping from the fabric of her pants. He knows that this was exactly what she didn't want him to say. Which is why he did.

There are two sides to this coin, and Kathryn understands what he means without an explanation.

In another universe, Molly lived. She grew up in the halls of this ship, running from crew members trying to catch her, hair fraying from auburn braids. She grew up in a house in Indiana, hopelessly trying to learn the piano. She visited Trebus, and Chakotay taught her all the things his father had taught him. She played in the field behind their house with a scruffy mutt that showed up one day and never left.

She failed a course in particle physics her first year at the Academy and had to retake it. She came home for Christmas and almost set the house on fire trying to bake brownies. She studied physical anthropology, graduating surrounded by her enormous, extended, Voyager family.

In another universe, Molly survived her first posting. 

It tears a sob out of her. He slides himself across the floor so he's beside her, an arm across her shoulder. "I can't do this," she says, and he drops his arm, suddenly aware of the fact that he slept in her bed last night. "We're too close to home," she says, because the word has too many definitions now and it's the only thing she can say that encapsulates any of her thoughts.

"What?"

"I can't do this," she says again, "because there's no going back."

His fear has faded now, scrubbed away by his proximity to her. "That's the funny thing about time, Kathryn," he says. "We don't get a do-over."

 

"I'm trying not to need one."

He laughs at that, an accidental, sharp sound devoid of humor. "The universe is a kaleidoscope," he says. "You can look at it all you want, but you can't see all of it at once. It shifts and changes and every view is warped. We don't know everything there is to know. We never will. There are mysteries in this universe that we'll never untangle. The Borg queen was trying to torture you. Now you're just torturing yourself. 

"We experience time linearly. There are some things you can't take back. But you can take them forward." He hears the movement of her hair as she nods. He puts his arm around her shoulder again. She shivers at the touch of his lips against her temple in the dark.

Voyager shudders back to life, the lights flickering on. The warp engines are still silent, but a slight hum, higher and sharper, tells them that impulse engines are up. He stands and offers her a hand, pulling her to her feet.

"I'll head to engineering," he offers.

She nods. "I'll head to the bridge."

"Kathryn," he says, and she turns. "When we're back," he says, but trails off into silence, studying her face. He said when, not if, and she notices. "When we're back, promise me you'll tell me again."

He can see from the set of her shoulders and the tilt of her chin that she's not sorry she'd breached their carefully constructed parameters by admitting her feelings that day qin sickbay, but his request has put her on the defensive. Her eyes are like ice for a moment, and she stands before him as the Captain. But then it all falls away and she's just Kathryn again.

Her lips quirk and it's not a smile, but it’s close enough for now. "I promise."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Again, my thanks go to devoverest for beta'ing this into a readable story that actually made sense, and to Thealorn for convincing me to keep working on this piece even though I hated everything about it at first.
> 
> While I'll admit that I'm still deeply unsatisfied with this story, I think it's an important piece in terms of what comes next. And on that note: 
> 
> I've got a whole lot more to come, mostly plot-driven, but with some interludes (like this one, but better) to stitch the story together. I'm very excited to share what I've been working on, so stay tuned!
> 
> Reviews keep me motivated (no joke), so do the thing!


End file.
